. I have to admit I was enrolled as a teacher quite by accident, but after the first initial training I decided it was totally worth joining.
Surf Project is a non-profit organization that enables children with ADD, Autism and Down to participate in a three week surf course, fro free. Action sports are usually not accessible for these kids as they need a lot more assistance then 'regular' children. The Surf Project makes sure that, with the help of a lot of volunteers, every child has at least one assistant. The groups are smaller, and have a maximum of 4 children per teacher. Next to that, there are always two extra volunteers to 'catch' the children once they have finished their wave. A HUGE amount of loving people involved here!
After the first training, that had presentations on the way these kids learn, and how to adjust a normal surfing lesson to their needs, I had an email introducing my students. I would teach two rounds of surfing lessons to four students each. To be honest, I was taken aback a little bit by the huge amount of information that was written about each student. It included a lot of 'labels' and focussed on all various little things that might make their behavior different. Pigheaded as I am, I decided to only take note of specific medical conditions that might affect surfing, and ignore everything else. To me, this turned out a wonderful decision.
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| © Jurjen van den Broek / Surf Project |
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The first day of the Surf Project was exciting; for the children, and for me too. Would they be nice, would they be stoked, would they be able to pick it up, and was my teaching style suitable for these kids? It turned out I had nothing to worry about. The first group had two boys and two girls, some had already participated in the Surf Project before and already knew how to surf! During the warming-up, I actually learned some new stuff too. As we were doing some yoga poses, one them the 'seal' pose, we started making what we thought were seal noises. One of the kids in my group pointed out that we were actually making sea lion noises, and demonstrated the correct sound. I joked that because of this, our local seal might come and pay us a visit. And sure enough, we hadn't entered the water for 5 minutes and there he was, our known-by-various-names-but-called -Harry-by-me local seal! The children were awed (and some a little scared!) and we decided he came because we called him.
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| It's Harry, the seal! © Jurjen van den Broek / Surf Project |
This was not the only wonderful moment in the class though. All the kids did great and were able to catch waves and stand up on them too. One of the girls even started making small bottom turns after a little private tuition. Everyone had a lot of fun and did very well. After this first lesson I was enforced in my decision not to read all the particularities of each of 'my' kids; the class turned out to be one of the easiest and funnest classes I had ever taught! The second group was an all girls group consisting some very confident young ladies with Down. Again, I was happy to not have had any pretenses; these girls ripped! This was an amazing way to spend my Sunday, everyone was smiling and there was so much positivity around.
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| © Jurjen van den Broek / Surf Project |
Due to logistic trouble I was only able to teach one day, but what a day it was! These classes were definitely some of the coolest I have ever taught and I would recommend everyone to join their local Surf Project or Wave Project. And of course, if you have no time, you can always
donate €€€!
It's amazing what surfing can do for people, not only children with ADD, Down or Autism. It would be so great if other kids, for instance underprivileged children from Amsterdam, that have never been to the sea before (a 30 minute train ride!) would be able to join a similar project. Perhaps some time in the future?
This week I had a nice email from the organization giving me a little feedback:
We would like to thank you again for the wonderful time you gave the children of the Surf Project. I had the chance to join your class in team Red and have to say you did an amazing job. Your enthusiasm and energy, but also the structured and clear approach you offered the children, were exactly what they needed. A great succes indeed, that first lesson of the year! I thought it wonderful to see. (Hanneke, Surf Project)
Well, thank you Hanneke and thank you Surf Project, this is the best feedback anyone could wish for!
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